


On a darkling plain

by Slappersonly



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 19:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slappersonly/pseuds/Slappersonly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seb goes missing for a few weeks, and then returns. Moriarty deals with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On a darkling plain

It's late at night when Jim's phone starts ringing. He's just put it down, after spending several hours laboriously organising a business deal with a Russian Mafioso, whose fractured English was only marginally worse than Jim's less than fluent Russian. The man has rung back twice, and Jim is entirely sick of him. The screen of his Blackberry shows up an unknown number, and so he ignores it. The ringing doesn't stop, and eventually Jim cracks and answers the call. He doesn't speak, though, and for a moment he can hear nothing but breathing.

“что это? ?” he barks eventually, irritably, expecting more Russian dealings, and there is a slight pause before a familiar voice says, “Jim?”

It's Seb's voice, undoubtably, though it's wavering and not as firm as usual, and upon hearing it Jim feels a wave of relief so strong that he feels temporarily light-headed.

“Moran,” he says, and the other man makes a low noise of confirmation.

“Where are you?”

“Outside,” he replies. “No key.”

Jim hangs up, and crosses his living room to press the buzzer by the front door, opening the main doors downstairs and letting Seb up. It takes roughly one minute and thirty seconds to get from the bottom of the building to Jim's flat, and he paces like a caged animal the entire time he's waiting. He's not seen hide nor hair of Sebastian for three weeks, three whole weeks. It's not that he _missed_ him, exactly, or worried about him. It felt more like losing a cherished possession, a hot itch of irritation under his skin that made him tap his fingers whenever he thought about it. He wasn't the sort of man who ever found himself in the position of needing someone, anyone, but he could admit that losing Seb would be... an inconvenience, of sorts. He feels agitated and hyper-aware, and hears the scrape of Seb's fingers on the thick wood of his front door before he even knocks.

When he wrenches the door open, impatient, Seb is leaning against the frame. He looks, Jim thinks, like shit. His normally tanned skin has a greyish hue, dark purple watercolour circles under his eyes. He seems smaller, somehow, shorter than Jim remembers, as though the time he'd stayed away from Jim had stretched Seb out in his mind, only to have him return to him a shrunken, pale imitation of Jim's memory. For a second, Jim doesn't know what to do with him. The heady rush of relief is mingled with disgust and disappointment towards this new Seb, this strange, weak man. Briefly, he considers shutting the door; he's seen him, he knows he's alive, they can move on from this now. Seb's eyebrows lower incrementally, disbelief beginning to dawn on his face. Jim makes his decision and steps backwards, holding the door open. Seb shakes his head sharply at him and steps into the room, long fingers clutching at his side. He staggers a little before sinking onto the black sofa, keeling over and leaning heavily onto the arm, hissing an uneven breath out from between clenched teeth. He carefully works his arms out of the jacket he's wearing while Jim stands aside, watching. Jim's itching to strike out at him, to feel his warm skin giving beneath the back of his hand, to hurt him.

“Where have you been?” he hisses instead, rounding on Seb. Seb peels his hand away from his side and holds it out, palm up, a placatory gesture. It's trembling, and sticky with blood.

“I ripped my stitches,” he says, and Jim narrows his eyes.

“The other bloke was worse off,” Seb offers, and Jim turns and stalks away, up to the bathroom where he keeps his medical supplies. He sets the box silently down next to Seb along with a clean white towel before heading into the kitchen, returning with a wooden box which he sets down on the table. He flicks it open and pulls out a bottle of Midleton Very Rare, which he opens and pours into two tumblers he'd bought from the kitchen. He passes one to Seb, but his fingers tremble on the glass, amber liquid sloshing up the sides. Jim, hating the weakness his friend is displaying, takes the glass back from him and hands him the bottle instead, before sliding to his knees and sitting on the floor at Seb's feet.

“Drink,” he commands, and while Seb is distracted by gulping the whiskey down, Jim reaches around his arms to undo his shirt. Too impatient to wait for his friend to shrug off the shirt, Jim picks up a heavy pair of fabric scissors and slices them through the fabric, swiftly cutting away the shirt until Seb's left with only the sleeve.

Seb swallows and coughs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“That shirt was expensive,” he protests.

“I know,” Jim replies, “I bought it for you. That stain was never coming out, anyway.”

He splays his fingers across Seb's ribcage carefully, laying them over the gaping gash slashed across his side. He's right; the stitches by his abdomen have ripped, lying open on either side of the wound like broken spider's legs. He hums, contemplative, before opening the first aid box and pulling out a thin pair of latex gloves which he snaps on, lookiang unsettlingly like a mad doctor. He grasps the edge of one of the stitches between his fingers and pulls it out slowly, and Seb grits his teeth against the unpleasant, whispering sensation of the thread being pulled from his skin. Jim drops the bloody thread into a white bowl he's bought in from the kitchen along with the whiskey, and Seb grimaces. When Jim reaches the intact stitches, he reaches into the first aid box and pulls out a pair of curved medical scissors, which he slips under the stitches and cuts carefully.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Seb hisses, raising his arm to glower at the top of Jim's head, “you're like a fucking butcher.”

“If I'm a butcher, who did this? Helen Keller?”

“NHS,” Seb hisses, and takes another swallow of whiskey. Jim tilts his head in acknowledgement, as though that explains it entirely. He sets the scissors down and takes a sip of whiskey, setting the tumbler down before picking a bottle of antiseptic. He presses the clean towel below the wound to catch the run off, and, after unscrewing the lid, pours the antiseptic along the wound. Seb hisses at the burning sting, ribs expanding as he sucks a breath in and rises up off of the sofa. He scrubs his free hand through his thick blond hair, his other curling tightly around the neck of the bottle. Jim dabs the excess liquid away as it runs down Seb's side, ignoring his friend as he curses.

He digs out a paper package from the first aid box, ripping it open and pulling out an atraumatic needle complete with surgical thread. Picking up a small set of forceps, he grips the needle between the ridges and begins to deftly sew up his friend's wound.

“Did you get him?” he asks, and Seb scowls down at him.

“Of course I fucking got him,” he snaps, and in his indignation he sounds exactly how Jim remembers him. His hands gentle as he works the needle through Seb's skin, pulling the gash closed carefully stitch by stitch.

Seb lifts his arm and cranes to look at it.

“That looks better,” he says. “You're quite the seamstress. Did you make all your own drapes, too?”

Jim shoots him a sharp look and pulls the suture shut quickly enough to make Seb yelp. He huffs out a laugh after a moment, and Jim takes this for an apology. He finishes the work in silence, and once finished pours more disinfectant over the wound, drying it carefully with the towel, and when he lifts it away from Seb's side the white is marred by bright circles of red. He presses a clean rectangle of medical dressing over the stitches and tapes it neatly into place before running his fingers down it, down to Seb's hip.

There's a dark scratch beneath the newly closed wound, a scar that isn't old enough to have faded. It runs just above the exposed curve of Seb's hipbone, and Jim runs a thumb over it.

“I don't remember this,” he says quietly.

“It's new,” Seb replies, and Jim doesn't like that, doesn't like the idea that this is something of Seb he doesn't know. He brushes the back of his fingers over it before rising up on his knees and pressing his mouth to it. The skin's wet where errant drops of antiseptic have run down, and it tastes oddly like iron on Jim's lips. The antiseptic is sharp and numbs his tongue where he traces the mark. Seb pulls a slow breath in through his nose, and Jim pulls away, sitting back down at Seb's feet. He rests his cheek on Seb's thigh, facing away from him. The fabric smells musty and unclean, but he turns his head and inhales against it, soaking in the smell of dirt, of Seb being alive. His fingers curl around the back of Seb's ankle, against the taut, thin line of his Achilles tendon, brushing along the scuffed leather of his shoe.

Seb slides a hand down, cradling the back of Jim's skull, fingers brushing through the short, dark hair. He brushes his thumb gently across the exposed nape of his neck, and Jim can feel his hand trembling.

“Yeah,” Seb says, and though his voice is still wavering it sounds steadier than before.

Abruptly, Jim pushes himself away, and stands up, peeling off the latex gloves with unnecessary force and dropping them on the table.

“You should get some rest. You can tell me about it tomorrow,” he says, not meeting Seb's eyes. Seb pushes himself up unsteadily, standing and breathing for a moment against the vague rush of dizziness. Jim watches him, unfamiliar concern making him distant and prickly. Seb makes his way past him, and clasps Jim on the shoulder just before the stairs.

“Jim, I-- thanks. For this. And...” he hesitates, looking as though it's choking him to speak. “Sorry.”

He rubs his thumb across Jim's collarbone before he lets him go and makes his way up the stairs, ignoring the guest room and heading straight for Jim's.

Jim watches him go, feeling flushed and jittery with conflicting emotions. He sinks down onto the sofa, amid the medical supplies and Seb's torn and bloody shirt. He runs his fingers across the arm off the sofa, leather soft and buttery to the touch. Restless, he reaches over to the coffee table and picks up his unfinished tumbler of whiskey, knocking it back. He pauses a moment before reaching over and doing the same with the second, untouched glass. If his hands aren't entirely steady when he sets the glasses down, he takes comfort in the fact that there's no one there to tell.


End file.
